Tag: Eve

After loooooooong time, the Cet MicroWPF repository is publicly available on CodePlex.
The awaited release comes with a (decent) tutorial, where you may follow step-by-step how to create a nice graphical UI for your Netduino. Many more is still to do, but of sure there are enough stuffs to have some fun!

The spare time is few, but step by step the target is getting closer.
It’s a been I’ve started playing around the FTDI FT800 Eve board, and it must admit it is awesome. If you need a quick solution to add a small touch display to your *duino board, the Eve is something you should consider.

You know, I love Netduino and C#. That’s because I chose to play with the display using Netduino (Plus 2), and honestly I’d expected a pretty bad performance. Instead, the graphic engine of the Eve can be easily driven via SPI from any board. That is, the SPI on Netduino is fast, very fast.

My goal is creating a small library for helping many users to create small and funny home/hobby projects with the Netduino and the Eve display boards. Since I love the classic WPF, how could I avoid to inspire from them?

Micro WPF

If you know WPF, many concepts would come easier. Otherwise, I recommend to take a look to the documentation, tutorials and whatever you want. Even if you don’t harm with a PC, rather with the Windows Store/Phone APIs, the approach here isn’t too far from.
The “WPF” term for a simple Netduino is clearly abused. Here is just the visual approach, the XAML-like approach to create the UI, and -yes- the same ability to create your own controls: MeasureOverride and ArrangeOverride.
That’s not all.
If you have any visual application in mind with Netduino+Eve (e.g. a climate control, IoT client, etc), then probably you’d need some kind of navigation service across several pages. That’s the most modern UI experience, on every device: PC, tablets, and phones.

I still don’t write what the library will offer, because it’s just something made for fun: for helping hobbists and even students working with a UI on a such small board as Netduino is.
For sure, there are NOT (nor in the future):

data binding

XAML parsing (the tree has to be created programmatically)

styling

the remaining 99.99% of regular WPF…

An example of layout

The most versatile yet complex layout control is the Grid, but it seems working fine.
Let’s take this sample XAML: